A rock star turned PI and his doting assistant investigate the murder of their client in this lifeless neo-noir from Cudmore (The Big Rewind). In the 1980s, Martin Wade found fame with his band the French Letters, but addiction and interpersonal discord led the group to split up. Now, with nearly 20 years of sobriety under his belt, Martin has established a small-town detective agency in Upstate New York, where he tackles cases with the help of music journalist (and French Letters superfan) Valerie. The past comes calling when Janie Carlock, the daughter of French Letters guitarist Ron Carlock, hires Martin to help protect her from her father. A longtime addict, Ron abandoned Janie years ago and is now seeking to reconnect, but Janie fears he has ulterior motives. When she’s found dead in a river, the police label it an accident, but her closest friends think it’s foul play—forcing Martin and Valerie to consider the possibility that Ron killed her. Punk and new wave fans may enjoy the music trivia and playlists on offer, but mystery readers are likely to object to the stale plotting and predictable denouement. This fails to strike a chord. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Benoît “Bruno” Courrèges returns to cook for his friends and keep the French town of St. Denis safe in Walker’s leisurely latest outing for the food-loving police chief (after A Château Under Siege). Back at home after convalescing from a gunshot wound sustained on his previous case, Bruno learns that human remains—two German women and an Italian man—have just been unearthed on the grounds of an abandoned hotel. Forensic analysis dates the bodies to WWII, and Bruno enlists the help of Abby Howard, a recently divorced American archaeologist visiting St. Denis, to find out more. Complicating matters is Abby’s ex-husband, computer whiz Gary Barone, who’s harassing her for her settlement money and attempting to hack the police department’s computer system, potentially as part of an international blockchain conspiracy. Meanwhile, climate change–induced floods threaten St. Denis’s infrastructure, pulling Bruno’s focus away from his and Abby’s inquiry. As usual, Walker peppers the action with long, chatty dinner scenes and detailed digressions about European history. Series fans will get just what they came for. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Susanna Lea Assoc. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

A young woman investigates her older sibling’s disappearance in this rote outing from DeCarolis (The Guilty Husband). As encouraged by their recently deceased mother, Vivienne, adult sisters Alex and Maddie Walker have maintained a strong bond. After Vivienne’s funeral, Maddie leaves Alex at their Pennsylvania family home to summer in the Hamptons, but promises to return for Alex’s birthday. When that day arrives, however, Maddie fails to show up or return any phone calls, so Alex heads to the Hamptons to track her down. After she arrives, she learns that Maddie has been staying at the home of real estate developer James Blackwell and his family, who were the last people to see her before she disappeared. The Blackwells invite Alex to take her sister’s place in their pool house while she launches an investigation. She accepts the offer, and gradually unearths secrets about the Blackwell clan that make her suspect they know more about Maddie’s whereabouts than they’re letting on. DeCarolis smothers the plot with too many narrators (Alex, Maddie, all four Blackwells, and an anonymous local), and though the action is diverting, little of it is memorable. The result is a beach read without much bite. Agent: Melissa Edwards, Stonesong. (July)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Author and sleuth Marcus Goldman returns (after The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair) to help his friend, Sgt. Perry Gahalowood, rectify a decade-old miscarriage of justice in Dicker’s overstuffed latest. In April 1999, a young woman named Alaska Sanders was found dead on the edge of a New Hampshire lake. Soon afterward, a suspect named Walter Carrey was brought in for questioning. He confessed to killing Alaska with his friend, Eric Donovan, and then grabbed a police officer’s gun, shooting both the officer and himself. Gahalowood, who was leading the Sanders investigation at the time, gets a shock when, in 2010, Goldman finds an anonymous note among the possessions of Gahalowood’s late wife insisting that Carrey and Donovan weren’t Alaska’s killers. The discovery launches Goldman and Gahalowood into a new investigation, which dredges up questions about Gahalowood’s deceased spouse and Alaska’s true identity. In addition to juggling timelines and locations—plus a dizzying barrage of red herrings—Dicker spends an inordinate amount of time on Goldman’s inconsequential romantic life, which does little to usher the already-busy story along. By the time Dicker brings this lumbering mystery to a close, readers will be more exhausted than satisfied. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Two friends stage an ironic bachelorette party for their friend who’s obsessed with exonerating a convicted killer in this implausible outing from Block (Girl Overboard). After conducting a prison interview with Eric Myers, who’s serving time for the decade-old “666 Killings,” budding journalist Alex Conley has come to believe he’s innocent. Days before Alex’s wedding, her friends—actor Melody and pro basketball player Lainey—surprise her with a trip to the abandoned Catskills cabin where the killings took place. The friends settle in for a night of drinking and smoking weed, and then Alex passes out; hours later, she awakens to find Melody and Lainey missing, with blood smeared on their sleeping bags and her hands. Cut off from the outside world thanks to a malfunctioning car and a lack of cell service, Alex searches for answers on her own. From there, Block intercuts Alex’s current investigation with flashbacks chronicling her crusade to free Myers. Unfortunately, Myers is the only character drawn with any nuance—everyone else, especially Alex’s too-good-to-be-true fiancé, are mere ciphers—and the contrived plot hits the skids well before its far-fetched denouement. This misses the mark. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon Literary. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Angoe (the Nena Knight series) delivers an impressive standalone centered on research assistant Jacinda “Jac” Brodie, who returns to her Southern hometown to tend to her ailing grandfather. When 28-year-old Jac is passed over for a fellowship, she learns that her boss, bestselling author Conrad Meckleson, sabotaged her chances after she ended their affair. Even worse, Jac discovers that Conrad is preparing to write a true crime book about the death, six years earlier, of her father, South Carolina police chief MJ, who fell off a cliff near the historic Moor Manor while Jac was nearby, making her a prime suspect. The investigation made Jac an outcast in her hometown of Brook Haven, but she returns after her grandfather, a retired cop, suffers a heart attack. Once there, Jac clashes with Faye Arden, a mysterious entrepreneur who’s recently renovated Moor Manor. Though Brook Haven society quickly accepted Faye into its ranks, Jac senses something sinister about her. As Jac digs into the businesswoman’s background, she comes to wonder if Faye is connected to her father’s murder. Angoe grounds the plot’s surprising twists with lovable, fully realized characters. Lisa Unger fans, take note. Agent: Melissa Edwards, Stonesong. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

In Lagercrantz’s excellent second investigation for Stockholm police officer Micaela Vargas and professor Hans Rekke (after Dark Music), the pair reopens a cold case when a holiday snapshot suggests a long-missing banker may be alive and well in Venice. Financier Claire Lidman was last seen in 1999 and reported dead 14 years later—but her husband, Samuel, brings Vargas a photograph that he swears contains the supposedly dead woman in the background. Vargas loops in forensics expert Rekke, and the more they investigate, the more they start to believe Samuel. Soon, they uncover Claire’s connections to a vast conspiracy involving high-ranking Swedish government officials, international finance, and organized crime in the former Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Vargas and Rekke face their own dramas: Rekke’s daughter gets a new boyfriend who causes friction between the friends, and an old enemy emerges from the professor’s past. Part of the fun is Lagercrantz’s deliberate use of Holmesian tropes—there’s a Moriarty-like criminal mastermind, and Vargas and Rekke echo Holmes and Watson in more ways than one—but he departs from Conan Doyle’s template with a complex, borderline-baroque mystery plot, to thrilling effect. By the end of the pulse-pounding denouement, readers will be breathless for the next installment. Agent: Jessica Bab, Brave New World. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Daniels infuses her charming if uneven debut with a palpable love for the Canadian countryside. In the novel’s opening pages, recently widowed Jeannie Wolfort-Lang, 61, has a peaceful morning in her Saskatchewan garden interrupted by a call from her son, Jordan. He informs her that Monica Ashton, a high-powered Saskatoon realtor, wants to buy Jeannie’s farm for a mysterious client. Jeannie resists, and she’s not pleased when the overbearing Monica arrives a few days later during a fierce windstorm. By the time the storm clears, Monica’s car has been totaled by falling tree limbs, and she demands that Jeannie loan her a vehicle so she can return to Saskatoon. Jeannie agrees, and a short time later, her car is discovered at the bottom of a ravine with Monica’s body in the driver’s seat. Jeannie suspects foul play, worrying that Monica’s client may have been attempting to kill her instead. To investigate, she teams up with a hunky local cop, igniting the first sparks of a potential romance as she tries to stay of harm’s way and considers the future of her farm. While the pacing is a bit jerky, Jeannie is a winning protagonist, and Daniels’s descriptions of the bucolic setting are irresistible. Outdoorsy cozy lovers will enjoy themselves. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Borgos’s entertaining second outing for Porter Beck (after The Bitter Past) sees the Lincoln County, Nev., sheriff pursuing a brilliant teenage hacker. The same night one of Beck’s oldest friends dies of an opioid overdose, another childhood buddy—rancher Jesse Roy—is the victim of a bizarre attack: someone hacks into a military drone’s operating system and uses it to fire a missile at Roy’s prize bull during his daughter’s 17th birthday party. The undercover agents assigned to the case tell Beck that, after the drone was returned to the Air Force, the anonymous hacker sent military flight controllers a message: “Please give my regards to Sheriff Beck. And sorry for the inconvenience.” Based on a tip from his adopted sister, who works at the local juvenile detention center, Beck comes to suspect adolescent tech genius Mercy Vaughn—but before he can investigate, Mercy disappears. Beck sets out to find her, learning, in the process, that her handlers are more dangerous than anyone imagined. Borgos’s vivid local color calls to mind Craig Johnson’s Longmire series, but his clever plotting and well-rounded characters stand firmly on their own. This series deserves a long life. (July)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Reality TV and AI collide in Satterthwaite’s imaginative debut about a synthetic woman (or “synth”) suspected of murdering her husband. WekTech industries created Julia Walden to compete on a popular dating series, The Proposal, for the heart of Joshua LaSala. Charmed by Julia’s beauty and kindness, Josh chooses her, and they marry. Fourteen months later, the couple’s romance has soured: they’re struggling to raise an infant daughter and their rural home in Indiana is regularly vandalized by Proposal viewers. Overwhelmed, Josh heads out on a camping trip to clear his head. When he fails to return home, Sheriff Hank Mitchell informs Julia that his empty car was found in the woods near a highway. Hank, who has a strong aversion to synths, is convinced that Julia has something to do with Josh’s disappearance. Desperate, Julia turns to her creator, Andy Wekstein, and her daughter’s babysitter, Eden Jeliazkova, for help clearing her name. Satterthwaite alternates the trio’s investigation of Josh’s disappearance with flashbacks that flesh out Julia’s backstory, building to an eerie and satisfying conclusion the implications of which will linger in readers’ minds long after the story ends. This provocative blend of domestic thriller and speculative fiction will leave suspense fans hungry for Satterthwaite’s sophomore effort. Agent: Lauren Bieker, Fineprint Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink